A section of leaders and residents in Langata Constituency have called on the Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission(EACC) to initiate special investigations into the expenditure incurred by the National Government and Constituency Development Fund( NG-CDF) for the past two financial  years.

They are contesting the fund’s activities for the Financial Year 2022/2023 where the Auditor General Nancy Gathungu flagged some irregularities.

The residents are also demanding a life audit of the current NG-CDF board members including its chairman Evanson Moturi.

They have further cited the contradicting statement by the fund’s chairperson with that of the auditor general on the total amount spent on bursaries.

A statement from the chairman indicates that Langata NG-CDF allocated Kenya Shillings 50,000,000.00 (34.5%) to bursary, which according to him  was the highest as far as allocation is concerned. Bursary allocation was followed by secondary schools’ projects at Kenya Shillings 34,860,000.00 whereas primary school projects were allocated Kenya Shillings 26,24O,000.OO.

However, according to the auditor, the statement of receipts and payments reflects other grants and transfers amount of Kshs.53,245,000 as bursaries to secondary, tertiary and special schools amounting to Kshs.30,910,000, Kshs.20,000,000 and Kshs.1,995,000, respectively.

“However, the specific criteria of awarding the bursaries and acknowledgment letters from the beneficiary institutions were not provided for review and thus  the accuracy and completeness of the bursary expenditure amounting to Kshs.52,905,000 could not be confirmed,” the report says.

The Management Committee (PMC) also failed to account for bank balances totalling Kshs.7,980,812.

“However, the cash books, bank reconciliation statements and certificates of bank balances for the individual PMC accounts were not provided for audit. ln the circumstances, the accuracy and completeness of the PMC bank balance of Kshs.7,980,812 could not be confirmed,”

Langata based businessman Johnson Oduk has said that he will write an official petition to EACC TO probe the expenditure following complaints from hundreds of bursary applicants who missed out on the allocations.

“ An official audit by relevant investigative agencies should be conducted because the audit report only gives us a highlight of possibilities and in this case we cannot rule out misappropriation,” he said.

The audit also highlighted an amount of Kshs.47,690,025 on transfers to other Government units for various projects. However, physical inspection carried out in March, 2024 revealed that projects with a budget allocation of Kshs.10,290,025 had not been implemented.

“ln the circumstances, value for money spent on transfers to other Government units amounting to Kshs.10,290,025 could not be confirmed,”

Some inadequacies in implementation of Kongoni Secondary School Project were also noted in the report.

included in the transfers is an amount of Kshs.1,200,000 disbursed to Kongoni Secondary School for construction of two storey buildings comprising of a nine (9) classrooms block, administration block with twenty (20) offices, secretarial pool, bathrooms, staff room and a twenty-four (24) door abf ution block all with a contract sum of Kshs.g2 ,417 ,657 . However, payments amounting to Kshs.28,095,746 were made to the contractor 08 February, 2023 despite the performance bond for the contractor having expired on 27 January, 2023.

 A  new contractor for the project  was procured directly without justification and contrary to Section 91(1) and (2) of the Public Procurement and Asset Disposal Act, 2015 which states that open tendering shall be the preferred procurement method for procurement of goods, works and services and that a procuring entity may use an alternative procurement procedure only if that procedure is allowed and satisfies the conditions under this Act for use of the method.

The new contractor was paid an amount of Kshs.4,61 ‘1 ,252 on 5 April, 2023 but there was no evidence of any additional works done and supported by inspection and acceptance reports. Physical verification carried out in March, 2024 revealed that the project had been abandoned as the contractor was not on site.

It suspected that more payments could have been made during the financial year 2023/24 amounting to a possible double payment.

 Meanwhile Mr. Oduk has called for an immediate reinforcement of the High Court ruling that declared  the NG-CDF unconstitutional.

The court ruled that the  kitty was unconstitutional after making a determination on nine issues following a petition filed by activist Wanjiru Gikonyo after the old CDF Act was declared unconstitutional.